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/ 
A DISCOURSE 






• D G E • t B 1^- at 



THE BURNING OF THE OLD LUTHERAN CHURCH, 



ON TUE NIGHT OF SEPTEMBER 27th, 1864, 



DELIVERED IN THE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH, 



WINCHESTER, VA., 



TXB NINBTaSNTB SUNDAY JtFTEK TRINITT, Wki, 



By Rbv. CHARLES P.' KRAUTH. 



IB i H t ^ J B { n : 

PRINTED AT THE REPUBLICAN OrFICE 

1856. 






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6 



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^ € D r T r 5 |i n 11 il f n r f . 



Winchester, Va., Octoeee 2o, 1854. 
Rbt. C. p. Kba€TH : 

Dear Sir — We desire to express the pleasure which we ia common with a 
•^ery large audience derived from the instructive and beautiful discourse 
delivered by you on Sunday last, and suggested bj the burning of the vene- 
yable edifice to which every citizen of our town has been attached by strong 
iies from infancy. 

We but express a general wish, when we ask that you would place in our 
iiands a copy of your discourse for publication, it is the more proper that 
you should comply from the fact that such an event deserves to be made 
jnemorable, and such a building, with so many hallowed associations cluster- 
ing about it, should not perish without the perpetuation of its history in a 
■form durable and worthy of the theme. We say no more than it merits, 
^hen we add that your discourse was eminently worthy of the subject. 

We ftre, with high regard, your friends, 

J. R. TUCKER, WILLIAM MILLER, 

JO. TIDBALL, JACOB BAKER, 

H. J. MESMEB, THO. B. CAMPBELL, 

J. S. CARSON, llOBT. B. HOLLIDAY. 

T. A. TIDBALL, F. W. M. HOLLIDAY. 



Lutheran Parsonage, Winchester, Va., ") 
October 26, 1854. J 
S. R. Tucker, Esq., and others : 

Gentlemen — I am not less willing to commit to you the discourse you so 
kindly ask for publication, because I feel that your estimate of it is one of 
the heart and not of the judgment. I meant but to lay a garland on an altar, 
and I thank you that your reverence of the memories to which I meant to do 
iiomage, has given value to so inadequate an offering. 
I am truly and gratefully yours, 

CHARLES P. KRAUTH. 



€^t (fi)l& i^imh till l\}t lili. 



Oar holj and our beautiful house, where our fiathws praised thee, is buraetl 
«p with fire. — Isaiah ixiv, 11. 

Though these words, beloved, give a natural voice to our grief, so 
natural that they were on the lips of some during the burning of tha 
church, and have been suggested to almost every one since, yet it 
would be affectation to pretend that our feelings rise to the same 
intensity as those of the Jews, who used them when contemplating 
the destruction of their temple. In the mouth of the Prophet, who 
embodied the spirit of his nation, they are the expression of a climax 
of sorrow : Zion and the holy cities are a wilderness, Jerusalem a 
desolation ; and in flames, their temple, more like a beautiful dream 
than a fabric, like a dream has vanished. Ours is not such a grief aa 
theirs, for the Jew's idea of the temple was more like that we have 
of heaven than that we have of a church. In their temple Jehovah 
was visibly enthroned, the light between the Cherubim M'as his face, 
whose glory was hidden by the awful veil from every eye but that of 
the High Priest, who entered but once a year, and that not without 
blood. In that temple only could the public worship be fully 
performed. As the objects of the first dispensation required the 
preservation of a strict unity, God bound many of the blessings of the 
covenant to one central place, linking the nation by every possible 
tie to Jerusalem. The dwellers in all portions of the earth, as they 
tiasted year after year to the great festivals at the temple, were 
reminded, that wherever their tents might be pitched, the city made 
glorious by God's resting in it was their home. The temple was their 
bond of life, the heart of their state — that gone, the Jew became a 
mere atom of a dismembered body, a particle of dust to be floated at 
the will of waters, and borne at the mercy of winds, till the day of 
the resurrection of his people. 

No one temple limits us in the worship of God. We sow the 
^and broad-cast with churches. Ours is an invisible centre o{ unity, 



(> EARLY HISTORY OF LUTHERAN CHURCH IN WINCHESTER. 

the glory of the latter house surpassing that of the first. Ours is a 
unity that makes needless the assembling of all in one earthly house — 
it binds together all true worshippers on earth, whether they bend in 
some mighty Mii»ster of ages gone by,*rich with the forms of art and 
hung with the fading trophies of battle, or sing their simple hymn iii 
the rude structure of logs, deep in the quiet woods, with only the 
gorgeous drapery of autumnal leaves waving about it. Their temple 
was designed to educate them into the spirit of devotion — with us the 
spirit of devotion is to be the creator of the temple. 

The place in which we gather reminds us that their most serious 
grief is one in which we are not sharers. We have this place of 
worship spared. Our ancient church has gone, like some venerable 
sire whose children are provided for, whose ties to him have become 
less distinct by intermingling with the new bonds of life, and who in 
new homes feel an assuagement of sorrow, even when they think of 
the old home forsaken, and the old hearth desolate. Thus we mourn 
with a subdued regret, mingling in not unnaturally with that gentle 
autumnal melancholy which is hardly sadness. 

And yet our attachment is strong, cur grief is sincere. Association, 
memory, reverence, hallow and beautify the spot. Some wept for 
the church, all follow its destruction with regrets. We have lost a 
remembrancer of our fellowship with the dead, and a prompter and 
aid to communion with them. They seemed not to be wholly torn 
from us while jt was with us — ^but now it is departed too — our dead 
fathers He around our dead church. Yes, it is a language created 
marvelously, as so much of Scripture is to our very lips, for us who 
spring from those who were the founders of the church, and for us 
who are their children in the lineage of faith : « Our holy and our 
beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with 
fire." 

On the 15th of May, 1753, Lord Fairfax granted certain lots in 
the " Addition to the Town of Winchester" for the use of the German 
Lutheran Church. At the meeting of the Synod of Pennsylvania, 
the mother of all our Lutheran Synods, in 1762, the Lutheran Church 
in Winchester was received into sy nodical connection. Two years 
later, April 1 6th, 1764, the corner-stone of our church was laid. 
When the black cloud of Indian warfare was scowling over our 
colonies, and every heart was throbbing with the horrors of a merci- 
less warfare, our fathers laid the foundation of a temple which was to 
stand when the savages had melted away like snow, and the French 
with whom they were allied had undergone mutation on mutation— r-a 



THE OLD CHCJRCH. 7 

temple which was to witness the birth and growth of the greatest of 
nations. Eight years later, in 1772, after great expenses had been 
incurred, the walls were completed, on which even women had 
labored with their own hands, the rafters raised, and workmen were 
busy in covering and finishing the church. The subscription papers, 
now in possession of our congregation, were duly authenticated by 
the clerk of the court, and by all the justices of the peace in the 
county, and the county seal appended. The growing troubles which 
ripened into our Revolution seem to have suspended the work. 
During the Revolution the church was used as barracks, and the 
traces of the smoke from fires built within it tvfife visible upon the 
walls till they were plastered over. In 1785, when Rev. Christian 
Streit took charge of the congregation, the church had neither doors 
nor windows, and in the following year funds were raised for its 
completion by a lottery. The ftoposals were printed in Frederick, 
Md. The spire was not erected as part of the original structure. In 
1790 two bells of wonderful sweetness were cast in Bremen, expressly 
for this church, as the inscription on the one which still remains 
states. It was long the custom to ring them on Saturday evening, to 
remind men of the approach of the day of rest. The larger one was 
unfortunately broken while tolling to announce a death. About 1795 
the organ was placed in the church, where it remained until the 
summer of the present year, when it was taken down and removed 
to be used in a German Lutheran Church in Baltimore. 

The church was constructed with the utmost solidity, built of th > 
old gray limestone, down upon the rock. It ascended slowly becau5e 
the expenses of building were enormous, and workmen difficult to 
procure at any price, and because our fathers would contract no debt* 
in building. It was built to endure, and generations might have 
continued to worship there. 

And may we not apply to our church, thus reared and completed,, 
the epithet « beautiful ?" It did not indeed pretend to be gorgeous — 
there was nothing showy about it — but it had pre-eminently the 
beauty of congruity. All the churches now used in our place have 
been built since, yet it remained most church-like of all, most sure 
never to be mistaken for anything but a church. It was a plain old 
church with no sort of pretension ; it did not aspire to be Gothic or 
Romanesque ; it was neither modelled after the Parthenon nor Pan- 
theon, neither after St. Peter's nor St. Paul's. It simply sought to 
be a church, a church for the village on whose borders it was reared— 
and such it was. 



8 ITS SITK, 

It had the beauty of adaptation. It answered its ends. It war 
not provided with curious recesses by which the fabricated temple 
steals from the space meant for the living one ; it had no elaborate 
windows of stained glass, corered with emblems, a maze of cups and' 
cars of wheat and clusters of grapes ; of apostles with keys and 
Bwords ; of butterflies leaving their chrysales, and pelicans feeding 
their young with their blood. It had not a single one of all the 
contrivances by which the religious appetite is titilated, and which 
help the eye to the delusion that it can do the work of the heart, 
not a solitary one of the ecclesiological contrivances which are slowly 
toiling in our country to create the want they pretend to supply. 

Our church was a place fitted for praise. Its arched ceiling did 
not drink up the voices of those that sung to Jehovah, but increased 
their volume as they rose with the trumpet stop of the organ, or 
mellowed them as they floated on its softer ripples of sound. In 
simple good taste it stood, offering no pretensions unworthy its 
builders, no incongruities as an offering to Him to whom they reared 
it ; a fit place for unpretending men to worship in spirit and truth 
the living God. Its whole air was calculated to impress the mind 
with reverence, and make men say as they entered : " How dreadful 
is this place ! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the 
gate of heaven.'^ 

Those rough, hard-handed old fathers of ours were not without 
feeling, not without taste. The very location of the church they 
Ireared availed itself of an effect, taken without money or price from 
(he hand of Nature, an effect which it would have cost thousands of 
dollars to produce by mere art, and which then would not have been 
so perfectly secured. The church swept with its sober glance almost 
t.o the horizon. Clear out from all buildings, on a wide-commanding 
hill, it received from the eye of the observer part of that reverent 
'regard which it is the highest triumph of Architecture to share with 
!^ature. O'er valleys and the silvery traces of the Shenandoah to the 
blue mountains on the East, o'er forests and the lake-like undulations 
of hills to the blue-gray mountains on the West, the eye wandered, till 
it was drawn to the venerable church and fixed by it as an adjunct, half 
of Nature, half of Art, to the scene, a venerable daysman harmonizing 
two powers not unwilling to be reconciled. It formed a more vivid 
object in the memory than the whole town which lay beneath it. 
It took a place in the mind by the side of forests and rivers and hills ; 
by its uses and its site linking earth and heaven, a thing dear to man, 
to Nature and to God. Dear for its suggestions was that old church ; 



ITS HALLOWED CHAKACTER. 



$ 



the' first object to salute, the last to fade from the eye of him who 
came or went. The departing child of our place saw it through 
tears of sorrow, the returning one through tears of joy ; the last, the 
first object 5 the last to tell the pilgrim wanderer as it pointed to the 
sky that there was a home for him in heaven happier than the one he 
was leaving; the first to tell that same wanderer when he came back 
again that the home of his childhood was near, yet still, still pointing 
away to a brighter home beyond the stars. What a silent yet not 
unreal influence for virtue was exercised on the children that were 
reared in our place by the fact that an object of such early and 
tender reminiscenceshould be a hoi}'' one, a house of God. In all 
the wantonness which had given so much alarm, who believed that a 
hand, young or old, could be found, malignant enough to touch with 
flame that venerable pile ? And it was not design, but what men call 
accident, and christians call providence, that gave it at last in its 
sacred beauty to the flames. 

For its beauty was sacred. It was a " holy " house. We have 

been speaking of its body, let us look at its soul. It was holy 

because of the name of God upon it. We know on general grounds 

our fathers' principles, but an ancient paper has been recovered 

within a few years, through which they seem to speak to us out of 

their tombs. It is a discolored paper, reduced to fragments by time, 

but with every word legible, the Latin record of the aims of the 

builders, designed by them for the corner-stone of the church : 

" In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the 

foundations of this temple of God have been laid." " This temple 

is consecrated to the triune God." To the blessed Three, the r"''ndi- 

vided One, they reared this house. It was hallowed by the doctrine 

to whose preservation and extension it was consecrated. Their view 

of freedom of conscience was not that of the indifference which 

mingles and confounds truth and error. " It is consecrated," says 

that same old document, " to our Evangelical Religion only, to the 

exclusion forever of sects, whatever name they may bear, and of all 

dissenting from, or not truly assenting to, our Evans^ielical Lutheran. 

Religion." They did not simply say, ' We consecrate it to religion,* 

(though that would have been enough if none were in error as to 

what religion is,) for even the Pagan calls his dark superstition 

religion ; not simply ' to the Christian religion,' for the Mormon calls 

his beastly materialism the Christian religion ; but they used that 

definite term which placed their meaning beyond question, just a* 
o 



10 HOLY REMINISCENCES. 

they found it necessary amid the " gods many and lords many," to 
say not simply ' to God,' but to ' the one God, the Father, the Sou, 
and the Holy Ghost.' Knowing that their religion was no novelty, 
they placed the house beyond the invasion of error by consecrating 
it to the faith they confessed, and that alone. And when they said 
< Our Evangelical Lutheran faith,' what did they mean ? They meant 
to confess the supremacy of God alone over the conscience, the divine 
authority of the Bible in every question of faith and life, the great 
doctrines of human corruption and loss, of the repairing and healing 
of our stricken nature in Jesus Christ, the regenerating power of the 
Holy Ghost, salvation by grace, justification by faith, which works 
holiness by love, the uncontarainated sacraments, unbroken in their 
external essentials, untouched at their heart by the worm of unbelief. 
To these great doctrines^ old as Christianity and enduring as eternity, 
to these precious doctrines which after the lapse of nearly a hundred 
years are still preached' to their descendants, and still show their 
saving power in many of their hearts, our fathers hallowed this 
church. Yet, though they sought to prevent any wresting from its 
legitimate ends, the church they reared was marked by many an act 
of fellowship with' the other portions of the body of Christ. Its 
pulpit has been filled at various times by ministers of almost every 
prominent branch of the church', at its altar the invitation has been 
given again and again " to all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in 
sincerity, of whatever name or denomination," to approach and 
partake in the Holy Supper. The Rev. William Meade, now the 
venerable Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Virginia, 
administered on one occasion the Holy Communion, after our own 
form, to the worshippers there, who were then destitute of a pastor, 
and at a subsequent period the Episcopal congregation worshipped in 
our church for some time. In the earlier efforts of the German 
Reformed Church to revive their interests here they had the use of it 
repeatedly ; and during the past summer it was our privilege to place 
it under the control of our Methodist brethren, during their temporary 
privation of a place of worship. I rejoice that the very last use that 
was made of our church was one which implied the unity of all 
saints, one which testified mutual love and confidence between two 
great parts of the Redeemer's kingdom. 

Our church was " holy," too, in view of the sacred scenes which 
occurred in it, the sacred memories which grew around it. Our 
church was indeed one of the most simple, while the temple mentioned 
in our text was one of the most gorgeous ever erected to the worship 



WHAT ^ALL0^7S A CHURCH ? 11 

.of God in our \vorld. The temple of Solomon, with its columns and 
turrets, stood like some dense priestly band in robes of marble white- 
ness, lifting a thousand hands to implore mercy on the worshippers, 
till, touched by the sun, its lambent flames of gold appeared to be 
colling up from some great sacrifice to Jehovah, the priestly band 
seeming to vanish in the clouds of their own offering, as did the angel 
that soared from the altar of Manoah. Eut our temple, though far 
less beautiful, was no less " holy." What hallows ,a place ? Ko 
mere outside can do it, no forms, no mere creed which Jeaves the soul 
untouched, no pompous rites, no consecration by ceremonies however 
august can render a place truly Cod's temple. It is the living temple^ 
■ the body of believers radiant with the soul of faith and glorified by 
the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, which alone can hallow the temple 
made with hands. The church is but the outer court, the heart of 
believers who worship in it is the holy of holies in which Jehovah 
■dwells, and into which the great High Priest enters, and this hidden 
shrine makes the temple. The peace that passes all understanding 
must descend, the love that is stronger than death must tremble 
upward — and when their v/ings mingle, the sanctuary is hallowed— 
and God shines forth from between the Cherubim. And many .a 
scene of fervid love and faith in our church showed that it had the 
hallowing element. There fathers and m^others offered their little 
ones to God, with streaming eyes imploring the great Shepherd to 
•keep these lambs safe from the snares of life, and at last to gather 
them to the great fold above. There in due time those children, 
approaching man's and woman's estate, renewed for themselves those 
holy vows, and by the laying on of hands and with the right hand of 
fellowship were received into the communion of the people of God. 
There after the hours of lowly confession, precious seasons of 
■communion passed by, foretastes of heaven, leaving long and sweet 
^remembrances. There fervent prayer ofttimes rose, there the words 
of the cross rushed from the heart to the lip aad from the lip to the 
ear and heart of the hearers, there dews of refreshing and showers 
of revival fell — Jehovah showed that it was a place of his rest by 
making it glorious, by clothing its priests with salvation, and making 
its people shout for joy. 

And year after year new associations clustered about it connected 
with the dead. It was first hallowed by the ashes it shaded, and at 
last by the ashes it contained. Our fathers fell asleep. Many of them 
were good and wise men. They had their faults, but happy will it 
he for us if posterity shall not see that our faults are more serious 



IJ OUR 6ERMAN AKCESTORS- 

than theirs. Happy shall we be if we leave to those that follow u> 
as much as our fathers left to us. They were Germans, not ashamed 
of their origin. We do not claim that our fathers were men of 
noble blood ; it was noble enough, however, to make strong arms, 
rational brains, and stout hearts. Theirs was the majesty of unpre- 
tending self-reliance, the stern independence which the resolve to toil 
promises, and the toil itself secures. Their motto was : "By working, 
the workman is made." Some derided their broken English, but they 
could not often deride them for broken promises, however they might 
sneer at them for being so cautious in making promises. Some who 
never knew the value of a dollar because they never made one, 
despised the economy which refused to squander what severe labor 
had won. Men laughed at the rough scales in which, whether an 
idea looked like silver or like brass, our fathers persisted in weighing 
it. They kept the even tenor of their way. Clinging perhaps more 
tenaciously to their language and usages because they fe't that they 
were the subjects of an indirect persecution, on they moved soberly 
and calmly, building up fortunes and demolishmg English in their own 
fashion. Time, the great test of all things, has shown that they were 
wise men. While families of other national stocks have vanished in 
their posterity, our fathers have grown stronger in theirs. That surely 
is not wise that tends to annihilation ; and when we see the names of 
the deriders passing away, and those of the derided abiding, we are 
forced to ask, if we admit the claim of the former to have had more 
knowledge, was there not more wisdom shown by the latter — if the 
one had more intelligence, had not the other more good sense ? I 
for one am quite satisfied with my patent of nobility furnished by the 
appearance of two ancestral names in the old Latin record of 1764-, 
and shall be satisfied to leave to my children a name as truly honorable. 

Beneath the walls which intercept the evening sun, our fathers lie 
in the shadow of the church they reared. They have passed away as 
we are passing, many of them, we trust, to the home of just men 
made perfect. 

But our church is hallowed not only by the ashes on which its 
shadows fall ; it is hallowed by the ashes it contains. Within it lie 
the remains of him who is entitled to the name of its first pastor; 
who, though preceded by transient supplies, may be regarded as the 
father of our church in this place. Christian Stkeit was the first, 
or certainly one of the very first, of the Lutheran clergymen who 
were born in this country. All the rest of his era, of whom we 
know anything, were natives of Germany. This venerable man, who 



RBY. CHRISTIAN BTREIT. IJ 

«o long, so faithfully, and so successfully labored in his ministrations 
of love, entered on his toils in this place July 19th, 1785. He 
commenced at once to preach both in German and English, and to act 
as the untitled but true bishop of all our congregations in this portion 
of the Valley of Virginia. At the first two communions which he 
held in Winchester, the number added by confirmation was sixty-five, 
more than doubling the membership. He at once took steps for 
completing the church. Our congregation were worshipping, at the 
time of his coming, in the log church on the hill. But they soon had 
the happiness of occupying a house of worship of their own. For 
twenty-seven years they enjoyed the faithful preaching, the spotless 
example, and the untiring pastoral attentions of one of the most 
unpretending and good men with whom a church has ever been 
blessed. In the sixty-third year of his age, (1812,) he was called 
from toil and sorrow to his reward. Amid an immense concourse of 
people his remains were committed to a tomb in front of the pulpit, 
which then stood on the East side of the church. I have before me 
the original of some obituary hnes, prepared by one whom without 
oflE'ence or contradiction I may call the most distinguished man of the 
many who have graced Winchester, one who knew the meek departed 
well, and loved him because he knew him, one who weighed his 
words — I m.ean the late Judge Tucker. These lines are written aa 
if inscribed upon the tablet that covered the remains of Christian 
Streit : 

■" Wilhia these frails, where late his warning voice 
Our pastor raised, that voice is heard no more. 
His meek and placid eye, his lips whence flowed 
In accents gentle as the dew of heaven, 
The mild, benignant doctrines of the cross, 
Are closed in death ; and on his slender frame, 
So oft in humble supplication bent 
Before the throne of God's most bounteous grace, 
Th' insatiate monster lays his icy band. 
This consecrated house, within whose walla 
* The pealing organ swells the note of praiss,' 
Is now his monument! The holy aisle 
No more his people crowd, no longer join 
With awful reverence the benignant prayer 
Poured from a father's fond and pious heart. 
To this sad spot they now repair, to view 
The sad memorials of that father lost. 
Does hoai'y age or pensive youth approach 
T.o read these lines, upon his loved remains 



14 MEMORIES OF THE DEAI). 

To drop a tear of fond regret, and draw 
New lessons of instruction from his tomb ! 
Speak, gentle spirit, from the silent grave, 
And let thy death, than any mortal tongue 
More eloquent, thy last, best precepts give. 
Bid them like thee pursue with steadfast course 
The paths of virtue, and like thee acquire 
The christian's best possession, a soul 
To peace attuned by meek-eyed gentleness 
And humble resignation to his God ! 
Tell them that then his terror? death shall lose, 
And from the direst foe become the best 
Of friends : Tell them the everlasting gates 
Of heaven shall ' turn harmonious' to receive 
Their souls, like thine, into the realms of bliss." 

When he first lay in the grave, and those to whom he had ministered 
gathered -where they had been wont to hear his voice, it might have 
been written, as upon the tomb of the architect of St. Paul's, who sleeps 
in the crypt of the church he planned : " If thou wouldst see his mon-^ 
ument, look around." A few columns of the living temple he helped to 
rear remain, (long may God spare them to us !) but the outward temple 
is now reduced to ashes and ruins. Those gray old walls alone now 
mark the spot of his rest. They mark it sufficiently for the Saviour 
he loved to know from whence to raise the dust of his faithful servant ; 
but shall these remains lie undistinguished by any token of the 
m.emory of the living } He needs indeed no monument, for it is so 
ordered that they who deserve such memorials most, need them least. 
Monuments are not designed to meet a want of the dead, but to do 
honor to the holiest sentiments of the living. Joshua was commanded 
to mark with stones the place where Jordan M'as passed, that the 
children might be excited to ask in time to come : " What mean ye 
by these stones?" What mean ye by these ^'onesl That loved ones 
sleep here who are not forgotten ; that the good sleep here, whose 
memory is precious, whose very bodies are consecrated to immortality. 
These stones are part of the testimony that man does not die, that he 
survives dissolution, that these ashes have a connection still with what 
was lovely and loved. What mean ye by these flowers, ye gentle 
ones who come to strew them where the sister, who was torn from 
you in her bloom, is sleeping ? Living she loved them, and her hand 
trained them — but she is gone to the land " where fragrant flowers 
immortal bloom ;" why lay these fading ones, for which she cares 
not, upon her tomb ? What meanest thou by these tears, thou 



DEATii AND MEMORY. l*"?' 

bereaved one who comest to wepp, where the gulf is covered but 
not closed where all the joys of home, all that lifted up the cloud 
from the future, all that gave a glimpse of heaven amid the sorrows 
of the world, yes the w^hole freight of thy soul's joy went down with 
one awful blow like that which sent the ^drdic to the sunless depths 
of the sea? What canst thou do by weeping wdiere thou sawest for 
the last time the form prepared by robes of whiteness and the pale 
roses on her still breast for the bridal of the tomb 1 Thy tears were 
once precious to her, when in some conflict of life resting her head 
Upon thy heart she felt them dropping warm in sympathy upon her 
brow. But what cares she for them now ? What mean we by all 
the instinctive homage we pay to the memory of the dead, the 
mysterious hush, the subdued tone when we speak of them, as though 
on silent wing they hovered about us, hearing our words ? Their 
lust requests are saered. The very thought of the covenant we sealed 
with them when the lips could speak no more, when the thin, trans- 
parent hand lay in ours, too weak to return its pressure, and by its 
faint, gentle trembling interpreting the appeal of the sad and dim but 
loving eyes — -the very thought thrills us to tears. With gentle care 
we lay aside, as though it was holy, the slightest thing which the 
hand we shall never 'fesT again has touched. Say that the dead 
know not of all these t:i^ng= — yet we know of them. The impulse 
that moves us isof God. The fullest homage to the dead is our most 
sacred duty to the living, to ourselves, to our families, to society — to 
God. The heart gushes over, not that its waters may moisten the 
lips that shall thirst no more, but by the impulse of its own fullness 5 
it sings its lov/ song of sorrow to hush its own grief; like a trodden 
flower it breathes forth its fragrance, though it may be " wasted ori 
the desert air." Death is the ministrant of all the sweetness that 
lingers in our world. Let the heart, then, rear its memorials as its 
visible utterances, its soliloquies on the departed.- Let us irark our 
desire that their memories, and our memory of their memories, may 
live when we sleep with them in the grave. The dead and living 
form one family, which awaits a perfect and abiding reunion. One 
of the venerable Catechisms of our church says truly and beautifully : 
*' Where thou seest a christian's grave, there thou seest the couch of 
a living saint." And no less truly, no less beautifully, the Shorter 
Catechism of a sister church teaches: "The bodies of believers, 
being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resur- 
rection." Christianity has made all that appertains to the dead 
inexpressibly dear, The mere it has glorified the soul, the moro has 



16 MONUMENT TO EIREIT. 

it exalted the body. When Christianity itself was preparing to g<5" 
down to th*^ darkness of death, in Him who was its incarnation, a« 
well as its Author, she who anticipated the homage to the dead was 
declared to have wrought a good work, and the box of ointment 
which jjrepared the sacred body for burial left a lingering perfume 
for all generations. 

Be it so, then, that the venerated Streit needs no monument ; that 
bis best memorial is his works which have followed him to the throne 
of God, and his works that remain to keep his pame fresh upon earth. 
Be it so — and it is so — yet for our self-iespect, for the homage due to 
meek and long tried virtue, from gratitude to one who passed through 
hard and often unrequited toil, through weariness and watchings, that 
he might serve Christ in his church ; and that we may teach our 
children that goodness, if not rewarded on earth, is at least not 
forgotten, let us rear a memorial. It is not that we may pay our 
debt, for that we cannot do, but that we may acknowledge it, and 
that by the hands of the survivors of his ministry and from ours who 
share in its blessings a monumental stone may be placed to mark the 
spot where the servant of God reposes. While many a Utile one that 
barely cast around it a flickering ray of heaven and then fled back to 
its home, while rnany who left behind none who had cause to 
pronounce them blessed, have their names recorded in marble, it is 
not fitting that these ashes should lie unmarked — the ashes of one who 
for more than a quarter of a century walked blamelessly before the 
flock, with a heart always faithful, often anxious, and at times 
silently bleeding. 

The holy and beautiful house where, led by him and the pastors 
that followed him, our fathers worshipped God, is " burned with fire." 
How our text tells our story in a few plaintive words. 

And the question rises at the very threshold, ought it to have been 
so? Was the providence one which designed it, or merely one 
which permitted it as a punishment to human neglect ? There is a 
tendency in the human mind to torment itself, when a stroke is 
irreparable, with the idea that it might have been prevented. The 
means of arresting or curing it seem so obvious M'hen it is too late to 
use them, that sorrow itself is sometimes absorbed in self-reproach. 
How slow is the broken merchant to believe that he could not have 
snatched his fortunes from wreck — if he could have averted the 
crisis a little longer, if he could have borrowed a little more money, 
he might have saved himself. It is always the turning of a hand, 



THE FIREMEN. 17 

which unfortunately turned the wrong way, but which turned the 
other way, as it might and ought to have been, would have reversed 
the whole result. What mother can be persuaded out of her belief 
that if this or that had been done her babe had not sickened, or falling 
sick had not died. How many writers sitting calmly in their homes 
have shown, after some gallant vessel was engulphed, how the 
catastrophe might have been averted or mitigated — and yet wrecks 
of vessels, wrecks of fortune, wrecks of life, still occur and will 
occur. Man's heart is ever rising- against the pressure of the thought 
that there is a destiny over which he has no control, that there is a 
will supreme and fathomless, which he not only cannot stay, but 
which he cannot even comprehend. *' The number of his months 
are with thee ; thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass." 
There is providence in all things, there is chance in nothing. 

It is a serious thing to intimate, yet more to make the charge, on 
slight grounds, that those to whom we look for security against the 
ravages of fire have by carelessness, obstinacy, or even by want of 
judgment, failed in doing their duty. Men should be very slow, 
except on resistless evidence, to suspect such a thing, and cautious in 
expressing it, for libel is not less libel because the sufferers by it are 
many. 

I confess when with hundreds of others I stood and gazed on the 
slow progress of the flames on the church, as though they were 
reluctant to execute their work, my first impression was that it might 
easily be saved. But when I reflected on the intense drouth, not of 
weeks but of months, which had made that roof like tinder, remem- 
bered that the slow spreading of the flame upon it showed that the 
fire was burrowing in the dry moss and incipient decay on its surface, 
saw with what difficulty the fierce fire raging below it with residences 
all around was subdued owing to the great scarcity of water, I felt 
that it would not be easy, even at an early period, to extinguish the 
flames. It was the duty of our firemen first to render secure the 
property around the fire. At what stage they could turn from this 
to the church they were themselves the best judges. It is hardly 
just for those who did nothing to throw upon those who did every- 
thing the blame of sacrificing the church, a building as dear to the 
firemen as to the rest of the community. The fidelity of our firemen 
has been tested repeatedly in the hour of need. In the dead of 
night, in the freezing breath of winter, they have risen to labor for 
the preservation of property in which they had no personal stake. 
Theirs is a labor for which Ihcy receive no compensation, and for 
o 



18 ORIGIN OF THE FIRB3. 

which they ask none. Our fire companies are not like some in our 
large cities, recruited from a class eager to avail themselves of the 
license created by a fire. They are the flower of our young men 
and of men in their prime, men not hastily to be charged with 
conduct for which their personal character and their whole past 
deportment is a warrant that they feel abhorrence. If a single doubt 
could have lingered in any bosom, it ought to be dispelled by their 
own clear and satisfactory statement ; the unbroken good feeling 
characteristic of our community should return, and we should feel 
that now as heretofore there is nothing to abate the gratitude with 
which we regard the past, the confidence with which we look to the 
future services of our faithful firemen. 

The fire in which our church was destined to be consumed, as well 
as the various others which have occurred, is by common consent 
regarded as the work of an incendiary hand. This fact is one which 
ought to be seriously pondered. Have these fires been the work of 
boys? Then our home influences are not what they ought to be. 
What sort of homes, what sort of parental influence, can be fostering 
boys who for an hour's wicked excitement are willing to set fire to 
property, the flames of which may extend where the guilty perpe- 
trators did not mean they should — the flames in which helpless animals 
have been cruelly burned, and by which human life is always hazarded. 
No mere thoughtlessness, no mere recklessness of sport, can lead any 
boy thus far. He must be rotten at the very heart, thoroughly 
depraved, before such a thought could be harbored in his mind ; so 
wicked that some awful judgment of God v/ill almost surely fall upon 
him, or on those whose example or neglect strengthened his tendencies 
to crime. Who are rearing such boys? Or is it another portion of 
our households ? The question then arises, are we doing our duty in 
regard to their moral training? Can we slothfully give up our 
domestics to their natural corruption, and expect the fruits of virtue } 
can we leave the fang and the poison-gland, and wonder that they 
sting ? We must either treat them as though, like ourselves, they 
have hearts to be renewed and souls to be formed in a Saviour's image, 
or we will find that their vices will prove scourges of fire to us. Or 
are we to attribute these burnings to a part of our community debased 
by griping poverty and ignorance, friendless and therefore the friends 
of none, who find food for their souls in malignancy at the more 
favored, and food for their bodies by plundering those they envy ? 
Are we doing our duty to them ? I ask not are we dispensing charity 
with that careless hand which often aggravates M'hat it seeks to reli^ve^ 



BURNING OF THE CHURCH. 1$ 

•wh'ich buj's sensation, or finds relief from a disagreeable theme by 

giving. Is there any care for their souls' estate, any judicious, 

united and protracted effort to restore them to society? From the 

one solitary vice of drunkenness great efforts have been made to 

reclaim men, and one reason why that beneficent labor has not been 

more fruitful is that it has been directed to that vice alone ; one deadly 

leaf upon a tree, whose root and trunk, whose sap and foliage, whose 

flower and fruit, are poison. The church itself is not the power that 

can renew society, but it is the medium of the power. God acts 

through it, and men must act with it — they must not put obstacles in 

its wa_y, they must not maim and cripple it, and ask, why does it halt 

in walking ? Its interests every man shpuld feel to be his own ; and 

until the church ceases to be a mere association in the community, 

until it becomes the community itself, society cannot be saved. The 

nightly watch cannot be omnipresent, but if we could restore a 

conscience to those who are plotting mischief, it would \vatch them 

all the time. Till society feels itself a unit\% realizes that it can no 

more shut its eyes to the healing of its diseased members than the body 

can to the cancer which preys upon a part of it — till the eye ceases 

to say to the hand I have no need of thee, and the head to the feet I 

have no need of you, so long mischief will summon its conspirators, 

and the moment vigilance relaxes, the blow will be struck again. It 

is an unalterable law that society shall bear in her bosom the scourge 

for her own crimes. If the effort of the community could he 

concentrated to the development of the tone which would check 

incendiary malignity, as it is upon the external means of preventing 

and extinguishing fires, the vital force would be felt in its deadest 

members, a light would pervade the darkest abodes and the gloomiest 

bosoms, and the flame henceforth kindled would be that of good will 

and love. 

We have seen the house reared by the gifts and toil of our fathers 
burned to the ground. Many eyes that gazed upon it were in tears, 
as if an old friend were slowly dying. There it stood so meekly, 
offering its silent plea for preservation ; the fire spreading, yet lin- 
gering, as if not unwilling that some hand should check it. First a 
single light tongue of flame seemed to play upon the edge of the 
roof, and then another, and another, creeping each toward each. At 
last high upon the spire began to blaze out a lone, lurid star of flame, 
like Mars upon the horizon of a sultry day, and then hearts began to 
tremble which up to that moment had not doubted that the Old 
Church might be saved. But the appointed hour had comp. It had 



20, BURNING OF THE CIIURClI. 

not come without a warning. Like an old man admonished by 
paralysis that the next blow will come from a hand which will lay 
him in the grave, our church had more than a year ago been touched 
by a lightning stroke, which proved an omen of that fiery death 
which was now at hand. At last through doors and windows, as if 
infuriated at having been so long neglected, the flames surged like 
the surf of ocean through the cliffs it has worn into openings. 
Scarcely could flame justify itself as an image of wrath in a form 
more vivid than that which it now showed itself. It had leaped 
from point to point, exultant and panting. At first it had been like 
some serpent softly moving toward its prey, its head bent low, its 
scales trailing softly along the ground, its forked red tongue playing 
silently ; now with towering crest, and gleaming eyes, and frightful 
hissings, it whirled in coils of fire around its victim. Portions of 
roof, and rafters, and gallery fell, with a sound like thunder. The 
flame spread among the graves, through the grass dry with the 
parchings of an unexampled summer, it fiercely followed through all 
their windings the dead roots of the venerable trees which once stood 
before the church, and spared not the sweetbriar vvnich for years had 
breathed its fragrance by the door. The spire, which so long had 
pointed to heaven, lifted its finger to the last, like some brave old 
martyr unsubdued by the flames. Till the last iron ligament was 
sundered, it pointed with holy obstinacy up to God, and when every- 
thing else that flame could absorb had vanished, it stood, though in 
fragments, rooted amid massive stones, and towering to the skies. 

It was a superstition of other ages that lightning and flame hallowed 
whatever they touched. It was not, however, a superstition without 
a root, for what powers are so fearfully direct from God, what so 
God-like, so resistless, so beneficent when they purify and warm, so 
awful when they strike and consume, as lightning and fire ! God's 
pathway, the prophet tells us, is burning coals, and the lightning is 
the spear that glitters in his hand. Our church is a ruin by no 
desecrating touch ; it is the sacred ravage of the two mightiest and 
purest powers in nature — the flame of earth, the fire of heaven. 
When we reflect " to what base uses we may return," and especially 
in our land where Utility of the lowest kind is a giant with an iron 
hand, and Reverence a poor abandoned babe, and think that some 
future ignominy might have blotted out all the beauties of its older 
memories, we can feel but a tempered regret that the church is 
gone. To the question, what shall be done with one of the gallant 
ships of our land, which after long bearing her thunders over the 



RUINS OF THE CHURGII. 21 

\!eep has grown unseaworth}', who would not reply : " Let her with 
spread sail and the glorious flag she defended flinging its folds over 
her, with no human foot touching her hallowed deck, with no human 
eye to see her last struggle, let her be given to the winds and the 
waves, that her memorial may close with the words, 'she yielded to 
no arm but that of Jehovah,' and the latest generation of our race 
say of her tomb as was said of that in which God laid Moses, ' no 
man knoweth of it to this day.' " It shall not be for generations 
that we know not to decide what shall be done with our church. 
God has decided. He has taken it from our hands and theirs, and I 
lor one say, it is well; holy houses like holy men may be taken from 
the evil to come. 

The church is gone, but the soul, the immortal part, remains. The 
patriot dies, but the country lives ; the mother dies, but her spirit 
lives as a household power; the pastor dies, but his teaching and 
example live ; Jesus was " crucified through weakness, yet he liveth 
by the power of God;" the church is burned, but the God whom 
men were taught in it to reverence, the truth and holiness it cherished, 
these live and perpetuate themselves through generation after gene- 
ration. All that k of God abideth. Like the Hebrew children, it 
%valks though the fire, with one like unto the Son of God by its side, 
and not one hair upon its sacred head bears trace of the flame. As 
we move along the paths where we were wont to be cheered by the 
sight of our old familiar friend, we still, though it gives us pain to 
«ee the wreck, turn our eyes toward it by the instinct of habit. How 
melancholy does it stand now, gray, and its crown cast to the ground. 
All swept away — all seeming to be forsaken. The rank weeds in 
time may fill the courts, the dark ivy find root in every crevice and 
mantle every stone — yea, the " sparrow may find a house, and the 
swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine 
altars, Lord of Hosts, my King, and my God." And when some 
in the la^ steps of old age shall dwell with lingering and fainting 
soul on the privilege of going once more before they die to the old 
church to which their first and warmest affections cling, as if there 
they could be nearer to God than in any other spot earth-side of 
heaven, when their dim recollection of recent things is aroused when 
they are reminded that the church they loved is burned, they will 
shake their mournful heads, and with eyes dim with tears say, ' Ah, 
yes, we remember all now,we can enter it no more, our holy and our 
beautiful house is gone. Oh, Lord, how long ? Is not thy time near 
that we too may go ?' • 



i>2 HUINS OF THB CIllRCH. 

It is gone — but its consecration shall be ])reserved to it — it B?ial? 
be hallowed to God still. Its shatttered walls wake new and not 
undevout thoughts. " Where will you find shelter," was said to 
LuTiiRR in a dark hour; " if you are deserted by 3'our last friend, 
where will you find shelter?" With his hand uplifted, he replied: 
*' Under the heavens." And thus our church, hallowed to the pure 
faith he restored, stands not unsheltered. A fuller light of heaven 
now beams into it ; its roof, which in covering feeble man also veiled 
a part of the glory that cometh down from above, is gone — open now 
to the heavens, it seems to say : ' Let the lightnings burst, let the 
storms of summer beat upon me and the snows of winter shroud me, 
I have done my work for God, and not without Him shall a single 
stone that gave shelter to his children or echo to his praise, not a 
single stone shall fall to the ground.' 

Now the noontide sun lies full upon its heart, the firmament covers 
it above, the moon sheds her pale beams where they entered not 
before, the stars shine softly down upon it, and nightly the dews fall 
as though they wept that it is gone. Removed from temples for the 
limited worship of a single congregation, Nature by her etern and 
fiery hand has caught it back and claimed it for her own, a part of 
her universal temple : 

•'That dome of nobler span, 
Tbat temple given 
To faith, BO bigot dares to ban, 
WhoBc ppoce is heaven." 



-ODa »UNa 5T TIfE CHOIR. 25 



<E:!ji: (Dili <i;]jarrli nil tlit Sili.. 



■JOSa SY THB CilOIB, WITH TilK EXCEPTION 01' THE THESE BTA.SJAi iS ERACRJt"i'», 



A hundreJ years have almost passed — 

Our fathers' gifts and toil, 
Where now thy shifting shades are cast, 

Hallowed to God the soil. 

And though a veil aboye their dust 
Thine evening shadow falls, 

Still springs to endless life the trust 
They learned within thy walls. 

Softly thy measured bells at eve, 
AYheu weekly toils were done, 

Called men the cares of life to leave 
With the declining sun. 

Blent with the pilgrim's memories, chime 
Those sweet-according bells, 

And still, though distant be his clime. 
Ring as of home he tells. 

When last he heard their sounds, the sky 
And fields of home were fair, 

The heavens seemed filled with melody. 
And music all the air. 

When from his heart, at parting, broke ; 

"Where now a home have I?" 
Thou, in the last long gaze he took, 

Wert pointing to the sky. 



^^. 



24 Ji'lE OLD CHUKCU ON THE HILL. 

^^iicl through the happy tears that filled 
The homeward eyea, was givca 

.V)y thee, to each returning child, 
A glimpse that told of heaveo. 



[ Thuu stood'st before the uatal morn 

Of Freedom's sov'reignty, 
Thou that hast seeu our Nation born, 

Thou shalt not see it die. 

Though flame had left unsummcd thine hourj>. 

And Time with kind delay 
Torbiddcn Nature's hostile powers 

T' anticipate decay ; 

That Land, when heaps of mossy stones 
Had marked thine ancient bound. 

Should rise, as thou didst once, when thrones 
Like them should strew the ground.] 



Farewell, thou holy house of God, 
Our fathers' and our own ; 

Where in thy beauty thou hast stood. 
Gray walls remain alone. 

No dove-like wings of th' Holy Ghost 
O'er font and altar spread, 

But Wrath on fiery pinions tossed 
Her horrors o'er the dead. 



'T is gone— a wreck of stormy flame, 

A hulk of etone it lies, 
Yet worthy of its hallowed name, 

It bosom to the skies. 



LBJa'IO 



